Today for the first time we welcome Jamie Young, Director of Recruitment & Admissions for the Full-Time MBA Program at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. Jamie graduated from McMaster University in 2008 and has worked in Canadian higher ed since then. He came to Rotman in January 2016 to assume the role of Director of Recruitment & Admissions. He also serves on the ETS Business School Advisory Council and Forte Foundation’s School Advisory Council.

Can you give an overview of the Toronto Rotman FT MBA program with a focus on its more distinctive elements? [1:44]

Our program combines 16 months of academic study with a 4-month internship opportunity. We offer 15 diverse majors, so candidates can choose to specialize in their second year, and there is something for everyone. You can choose everything from health sector management to brand management to investment banking to real estate management. It’s really up to you. So while we are renowned for our strengths in strategy and finance, we have a number of strengths.

Some of the things that are more distinctive are the Creative Destruction Lab, a course in the second year of our program that infuses a lot of things from across the university. It is a seed-stage program for massively scalable science-based companies, and at Rotman we have the largest concentration of AI companies of any program here on earth. Our Self Development Lab runs alongside curricula, with workshops designed to help students express themselves more effectively, understand their own motivations and of those around them, and work toward achieving their goals in complex and high stakes environments.

What’s new at Rotman? [3:56]

We are really proud of the flexible internship program, an innovation we announced just over a year ago. Students coming into the MBA program have the opportunity to complete their internship in one of three periods, our traditional which is the summer, but also the winter or fall. Right away there is this increased opportunity for flexibility, with students able to tailor their experience towards exactly what they are looking for. It also adds a lot of opportunities for students - there are organizations and companies that can offer really rich projects. We have seen incredible growth in postings, and it is an innovation we are really proud of.

We have also added an applied management placement course. We have some faculty and executives in residence guiding students through their internship experience, which is incredible to watch. So we see somebody with great experience of their own, and mentoring students to really reflect on their own larger goals. The execs connect formally with students and do exercises with them. One example is for the student to find individuals within the internship organizations who have experienced success, and then working back to figure out what the elements of that culture are that could help set the students up to be successful. It’s all about connecting and applying, making sure you are working toward achieving your larger goals.

Sometimes students want to complete more than one internship but that’s not a possibility. I will say that with the Creative Destruction Lab there are sometimes more opportunities, as sometimes students take on a CFO or COO role for some of these seed-stage startups, and it becomes more of an applied-learning internship.

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